[OPEN-ILS-GENERAL] General Questions

[Bill Ott]

>>  1. We currently use Baker & Taylor for cataloging of new book purchases.
>>  We download records from their web site, and then upload them into
>>  Unicorn..I assume this would also be possible with Evergreen, but is the
>>  process simple?
>>     
>
> I'm not familiar with Baker & Taylor, sorry.
>
> But I'm interested in some more detail- are you downloading just the
> bibliographic records via Z39.50? Evergreen supports this today; you
> would just have to set up Baker and Taylor as a Z39.50 source.
>
> Or are you downloading batches of MARC bibliographic records into a
> file, that you then load into Unicorn (either via a report or via some
> cataloging tool)? This is not quite as easy today; at the moment, to
> load batches of records into Evergreen you have to run some command
> line scripts. 

We use Baker & Taylor's Title Source 3, and download MARC records based 
on our orders, which I believe is what's being described.  What I've 
done is create some slightly modified import scripts, run as CGI 
scripts, which allows batch importing from these files to add bib 
records.  It also works for OCLC's CatME files, and probably others.

It's a quick and dirty approach, and we're only using it on a test 
basis, but it works well for dumping some data into the database 
relatively quickly.  For production use it needs some TLC.

The beauty of the Evergreen staff client is that it's essentially a Web 
browser.  So, you can run a CGI script right in the client, and with 
some minor tweaks add it right in as a cataloging menu option.